How do you keep wiring nice and clean while working with lighting? These are my top tips!

Making your wiring set up a bit neater as you work can make your life so much easier and will help you make the most out of your equipment and your time.

Setup

One really common way to set up lights is to have a bunch of uplights on the ground, perhaps a moving head nearby, and then your wiring setup. So how can you make this setup look as nice as possible?

When setting up there are a couple things to look for, the first being working with the LED uplights. When you are handling this, you typically will want to come through the side of the yolk rather than through the back. The reason for this is that if you go through the back and then you have to turn the light the other way you may sometimes find that they can get caught up on the yolk itself and prevent movement. Not every fixture will have this issue, but it can be quite a hassle when you come across the ones that do.

Another helpful tip is when wiring between fixtures. It is beneficial to keep all of your wiring to the wall on a moving head. This keeps the wiring between fixtures contained and neat. You can then easily wrap any excess wiring around your last fixture and use a piece of tie line to secure it in place.

Trusses

When working with trusses, whether large or small, there are a couple things you will want to do to keep the cables really neat and create a more organized display.

First and foremost, when you are coming up a truss with multiple cables there are a few ways to do it. Some people go inside the truss at the bottom and work their way up. This way however can prove to be rather messy as well as time consuming during set up and tear down. A more efficient way to go about this is to start at the back of the truss and tie off your cable from the top using a tie line and work your way down the truss, tying off anything you see sticking out or which looks unruly.

When you come to a fixture on a truss that is hanging off of it, especially a non-moving fixture, you will want to be careful to ensure that you have given yourself enough cable to make it all the way to the light and get it plugged in. Before you tie your cable back make sure that you have enough space to tilt that fixture as far forward as you possibly need to.

As long as your cables aren’t being pulled against your jacks or anything like that you will be good to go with your setup.

Pipes and Trusses

When you are dealing with pipes and trusses the biggest key is to take your time to be careful. Keeping your cables organized to come all the way down one side will save you a world of difficulty. If you happen to be sharing a truss, particularly with audio signal, keeping your different cables separated with one located on one side and one on the other can be incredibly helpful as well.

Closing

The benefits of staying organized with your cables during setup and take down as immense. Keeping cables neat and clean will help your process be much quicker and will keep your display looking as professional as possible.